


Taxonomy of the Wierd and Wonderful

by lferion



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Creatures, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Mini-Nanowrimo, More things in heaven and earth, Plants, Wonderous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 22:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five drabbles concerning some of the creatures of the Sanctuary world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dryad

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mini-Nanowrimo 2011. The accompanying pictures are all from the ones provided for inspiration.

##    


  
_Fraxinus Meliai_   


  


The dryad in the garden never spoke to Gregory Magnus. (That the slender ash was _F. Meliai_ , not merely _F. Excelsior_ was only one of the reasons Gregory acquired the house, and not the most persuasive.) Certainly not after he chose to enclose the trunk with iron, however aesthetic the fence or inviting the bench. Young Helen, escaping her nursemaid, would scramble up and reach through the spears to press small palms against silver bark and talk to the tree, seeing leaf-haired, dancing figures in her dreams. It was Watson, though, who saw the fence removed, the Quick aspect freed.  


* * *

  


  



	2. Stones

##    


  
_Saxum Cumularum_   


  


There is a creature that lives on beaches and riverbanks, near the edges of ponds and in tide pools that builds. It stacks rocks one atop the other in pleasing and meaningful towers. It collects bits of wood and shell and seaweed and arranges them in intricate spiraling shapes. It makes little mazy paths in sand and pebbles that draw the eye toward the water or away into the middle distance. But mostly, it puts one flat rock upon another, and another atop that, reaching up from the intersection of water and earth to the airy fire of the sky.

  


* * *

  


  



	3. Monsters

##    


  
_Fauna Monstruosus_   


  


Some of the creatures they dealt with in the Sanctuary network were what nearly anyone would call monsters: large, dangerous, frightening, destructive to other life; their appearance going to atavistic places in the human (and human-variant) psyche, invoking horror, revulsion, disgust in any and all senses (slimy, sticky, tentacled, smelling of carrion and decay, disturbingly quick, distressingly shaped, all sights, sounds, and textures of figures out of nightmare, the visions of Geiger and Lovecraft). But Declan — and James before him — knew that the true monsters were the ones with minds capable of awareness and reason, who acted out of choice.

  


* * *

  



	4. Steel and Gold

##    


  
_Fauna Maritimus Insolitus_   


  


The sea was steel and gold in the low light of winter sunset, laced with white foam and the frothy spray of wind-whipped wave tops. Ribbons of silver marked the curves where fins and tails and salt-slick bodies cut through the towering, smooth faces of the waves as they raced toward the beach; selkies and mer-folk and other peoples of the open water dancing in the lively ocean, daring the surf and the close rocky shore. It was far too cold for scant-haired humans, but those with fur or scales or feathers reveled in the mist-bright air and dark water.

  


* * *

  


  



	5. Vines

## 

_Hedera Helix Mutabilis_

The London Sanctuary is an old building, built on the foundations of buildings older still. The banks of the Thames have been lived on for a very long time, by many different peoples and beings. In one corner of the garden (and there has always be a corner there, or near — of tumbled rocks, of withys, of shaped stone, brick, clay and plaster, earth or wood) grows a vine. Much of the time it looks and acts like ivy or wisteria, occasionally clematis or grapevine or even climbing rose. It is a Chameleon vine, and even the Ash respects it.

  


* * *

  



End file.
